For Minnesota’s undocumented workers, a rising fear as second Trump term looms

Most of the fellow workers Jorge encounters at Twin Cities construction sites are, like him, undocumented. As they hear President-elect Donald Trump’s vows of mass deportations, they have taken to teasing one another: “It’s time to go.”

“We’re trying to make it seem so that it’s not so difficult or harsh,” Jorge said in an interview. But there is fear underneath the wisecracks. “The majority of people who have families are scared,” he said.

Minnesota’s estimated 81,000 unauthorized immigrants, and the industries that rely on their labor, are bracing for the impact of Trump’s repeated pledges to carry out deportations on an unprecedented scale as soon as he takes office Jan. 20. “I think you have to do it, and it’s a very tough thing to do, but you have rules, regulations, laws,” Trump said recently on NBC. “They came in illegally.”

Unlawful border crossings reached record levels under President Joe Biden. Millions of immigrants were released into the interior of the United States with notices to appear later in immigration court for removal proceedings, contributing to a record court backlog nationally and in Minnesota.

Others, such as Jorge, are not on the court dockets as they are longtime undocumented residents who never turned themselves in at the border. Due to their lack of legal status, Jorge and other migrants agreed to be interviewed on the condition that the Minnesota Star Tribune withhold their surnames.

The Mexican native, 30, has lived in Minnesota without papers for more than a decade, working as a roofer on large houses in upscale suburbs from Wayzata to Edina. From that precarious position, one among the nation’s estimated 1.5 million construction workers, Jorge sees the current rise in migration affecting his own prospects.

Jorge once worked mainly with Mexican and Central American migrants, he said. In recent years, he has been charged on construction sites with training migrants from Ecuador — only to see employers hire those workers instead because they worked for less.

The increased competition has led to a slowdown in work for Jorge. “They are dropping down the wage,” he said. The boss, he added, “would rather pay less money.”

Attorneys say the government can’t instantly deport recent arrivals who already have cases making their way through the system; they have a right to due process and can legally remain in the United States until a judge decides on their case and appeals are exhausted.

At the south Minneapolis street corner where they show up for jobs, a handful of South American day laborers said they have removal proceedings pending in federal immigration court at Fort Snelling. But there were no plans to stop showing up after Trump takes office.

An Ecuadorian laborer named Lenin said he was scared but plans to stay: “I’m going to be out [on this corner] because I have to work,” he said.

“I don’t have to worry about being deported because I’m not a criminal,” insisted Jose, a recent Colombian migrant standing nearby. He was alluding to Trump’s vow to focus first on sending back undocumented people with criminal records. “I need to work.”

Jorge also said he won’t change much about his routine after Trump is elected. His primary concern, he said, is going out on construction jobs to support his wife and 10-month-old baby.

Critics of Trump’s immigration plans voice concern that mass deportations would worsen labor shortages. The president-elect argued during the campaign that the “border invasion,” in his words, is crushing the jobs and wages of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and union members. In October, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance told the New York Times: “We cannot have an entire American business community that is giving up on American workers and then importing millions of illegal laborers.”

Jorge was deported during Trump’s first term, after he was pulled over for speeding and authorities found he was unauthorized. He said he signed a document in jail that he didn’t understand and was quickly sent back to Mexico, only to sneak over the border and return to Minnesota a few months later.

Determined to keep working at higher wages than he could in Mexico, Jorge and his family are now among the 4.7 million mixed-status households in America. Last year he married Estephany, the American-born daughter of an undocumented Mexican immigrant, and they had a son. Trump has said he would end birthright citizenship and deport entire mixed-status families because he doesn’t want to break them up.

A federal judge recently overturned a Biden administration program that would grant legal status and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens, rendering the family’s future even more uncertain. Estephany wouldn’t mind going back to Mexico to be closer to relatives, but Jorge wants to stay here for better economic prospects.

Immigration attorney Steve Thal said he’s advising mixed-status families to make what’s known as a delegation of parental authority, which gives legal authority to a lawfully present person to make decisions on behalf of an American-born child if an undocumented immigrant parent is deported. For those subject to removal, Thal said, there is still a right to due process: requirement of a notice to appear in immigration court and a chance to apply for relief.

The Fort Snelling immigration court has a record backlog of more than 42,000 pending cases — triple the amount at the start of Biden’s term. Thal said a surge of deportations “will be a tremendous challenge for [the courts.] Unless they get additional staff, additional judges, additional space, I don’t see how they would have the capacity to take on more than what they’ve already got.”

Trump is expected to restore an expanded policy of “expedited removal” that Biden withdrew in 2022. It allowed the Department of Homeland Security to fast-track deportations of immigrants unlawfully residing in this country for less than two years and encountered by authorities within 100 miles of a national border.

That’s led immigration attorney Cassondre Buteyn to advise clients who go to contracting jobs in northern Minnesota to carry proof that they’ve been living here for longer than two years.

One difference between the upcoming Trump term and the last one, Buteyn noted, is that Minnesota’s new law allowing driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants “creates a little bit of cover for people.” Previously, immigrants could be subject to removal proceedings if law enforcement pulled them over and found they had no legal permission to drive. Jorge recently obtained a license.

Several years ago, Jorge’s sister Adriana crossed the border undetected and came to Minnesota. Her 15-year-old son joined her this fall, turning himself in at the border and receiving a notice to appear in immigration court in September 2025.

Adriana, 35, has one job making cookies at a bakery and a second handling laundry at a hotel. The bakery work in particular is hard, but Adriana said she dare not complain. She doesn’t refuse requests to work overtime, she said, “because I fear losing my job.”

Trump, Adriana said, “makes us feel like … the work that we do isn’t valuable. I don’t feel like I’m taking anybody’s job. I feel like there is opportunity for everybody.” She doesn’t think people should be upset with undocumented people for lowering wages. Take issue with the employers who hire them, she said, and rely on their productivity.

In their common experience in the undocumented workforce, sister and brother agreed that workers like them are necessary to productivity and that their industries would suffer in their absence. Adriana predicted that production at the bakery “would fall very, very low”; at the hotel, she predicted, her boss would have to hire more people because, she believes, undocumented Latinos are twice as fast and efficient as other workers.

If Jorge is deported, he said, he would tell his wife to stay in the United States with their child, and he’d immediately start looking for another way back. She worries about that plan.

“I would not want him to get deported and then have to try to come back,” Estephany said. “That’s very dangerous.”